I’m making the gradual move to more and more open source software. Recently I have been using Mozilla Firefox (brilliant) for web browsing, Thunderbird (works just fine, and pretty good on the junk mail) for email and a Mozilla plug-in for my calendar (still pretty raw, but I only use it for keeping appointments). And just this week, I’ve committed myself to making the full on move to Open Office for most of the other functions I use my PC for, mostly word processing and the odd spreadsheet and powerpoint.
I want to do this because I believe that Open Source is really something we should all be supporting. It is more than just a model for software development. It is a model, as my friend Rob Paterson pointed out to me, for an entire economy. A model based on sharing, decentralization, passion and responsibility. With Open Source, if you need a feature, you build it, or you offer to pay someone to build it for you. Everything is transparent, so you can pick your spots and make a difference. Anyone can contribute to making the software work better, it all depends what you have to offer.
because Open Source software is free, any cash contribution you make to it’s development is still a bargain for the end user, and because the software is developed by volunteers, resources are used efficiently, not tied up in excessive marketing or, legal protection or administrative structure. Open Source supports light organizations focused on producing quality products.
In many ways, this is the leading edge of a new way of doing business, one embodied in a social way by what we are doing at GiftHub for example and trying to kick start with the Opening Space for Giving to Flourish Conference in Chicago this July.
Open Source is nothing new of course, but it’s starting to make a big move into the world of the moderately techno-savvy folks like me. As powerful free programs like Open Office become more and more available, I think it will force the proprietary companies to make some changes although we’re probably a long way off from knocking off the big boys.
I’m still wedded to Microsoft in the operating system though, using XP, despite the crazy week I had last week with the Sasser worm. I use free tools for most of my other work though, including (the newly improved) Blogger for the weblogs, Winamp for audio and video, NoteTab Light for html markup and AntiVir for virus protection.
But it won’t be long until I make the move to Linux I think. It needs a bigger time investment from me, but perhaps with the next computer I buy, Linux will find it’s way onto one of the boxes in the house.
By the way, you can find tons of open source programs at SourceForge.
What’s your experience of Open Source?
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From this month’s Harper’s Index:
Chance that an American adult believes that “politics and government are too complicated to understand”: 1 in 3
Chance that an American who was home-schooled feels this way: 1 in 25
Harper’s quotes a new research study from the National Home Education Research Institute as the source.
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From a posting on the Tomorrow’s Professor mailing list on a concept called active waiting:
“Active waiting requires the kind of patience that tolerates short-term discomforts (such as temptations to do something else more immediately rewarding than preparing for teaching) in order to gain longer-term rewards (e.g., students who learn more). Active waiting means subduing the part of yourself that admonishes you to put off thoughts of teaching improvements until you are completely caught up on other things. Active waiting, surprisingly, means being able to do two or more things at once (e.g., preparing for teaching during the little openings that occur even during busy days, while nonetheless making enough progress on other things). Oddest of all, active waiting also means suspending disbelief. You might, for instance, believe that efficiencies could work for other people by not for you (“I’ve always been kind of disorganized and happily behind schedule; I could never stand this”)…
Active waiting has many other benefits, some of them hard to imagine until experienced. It brings serenity because it is neither tense nor pressing. It provides a growing mindfulness of having something important and worthwhile to say before saying it. It promotes a more causal but focuses attitude toward preparing and presenting; teaching that once had to be written out is now more easily and enjoyably done from conceptual outlines and diagrams that often fill but a page per class. With active waiting, and decisions about the final structure of the content are put off, classes are more spontaneous and more likely to involve students as active participants. And, not least, with active waiting there is more opportunity for discovery in teaching.”
This is a short article but it describes an internal process that is very similar to what we call “holding space” in Open Space facilitation: that ability to be both totally present and completely invisible for the group. In fact this is a good skill to have for all kinds of facilitation, including parenting and being in relationship.
Found through the excellently repurposed blog of Karen McComas.
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A gem shared by John Engle on the OSLIST, and keeping right in line with some recent thinking on action:
Silence is the measure of the power to act; that is, a person never has more power to act than he has silence. Anyone can understand that to do something is far greater than to talk about doing it. If, therefore, a person has a plan or idea and is fully resolved to carry it out, he does not need to talk about it. What he talks about in connection with the proposed action is what he is most unsure of and most unwilling to do.
— Soren Kierkegaard
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In Open Space Technology meetings, action plans begin with baby steps. In the action planning phase of an Open Space event, I ask participants to identify key projects that need to be started or ideas that need to be moved forward. In order to focus small, self-organized workteams, I distribute a small form that helps to capture immediate next steps.
As a result, I am always looking for questions to focus planning groups on concrete collaboration. I found a few today at Reforming Project Management Theory and Practice:
1. Who could help me with this?
2. What do I have to offer others?
3. What new ways can we meet on a regular basis?
4. How can we stay in tune with each others’ changing project work?
5. What can you do to be more responsive to each other?
2. What do I have to offer others?
3. What new ways can we meet on a regular basis?
4. How can we stay in tune with each others’ changing project work?
5. What can you do to be more responsive to each other?
Very useful, combined with a question that asks the group to identify a time and place to meet again.